Cheskel Engel pays $4.6M to Sugar Hill for 20-unit walkup in Bedford Stuyvesant

Cheskel Engel through the entity 29 Brooklyn LLC paid $4.6 million to Sugar Hill Capital Partners through the entity 29 Brooklyn Residences, LLC for 20-unit residential walkup building (C1) at 29 Brooklyn Avenue in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
The deal closed on November 22, 2022 and was recorded on November 28, 2022. The property has 15,440 square feet of built space according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $297 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
The seller bought the property on October 21, 2015, for $5.9 million. The signatory for Sugar Hill Capital Partners was Margaret Grossman. The signatory for Cheskel Engel was Cheskel Engel.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, Pincusco has no record that the buyer Cheskel Engel had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Sugar Hill Capital Partners had not purchased any other properties and sold six properties in six transactions for a total of $31.5 million over the same time period. The former owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes David Schorr, head officer and Doron Yaghoubi, agent. The business entities are Trihill Management Llc and 29 Brooklyn Residences, Llc. The 15,440-square-foot property generated revenue of $416,958 or $27 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

The property

The 29 Brooklyn Avenue parcel has frontage of 36 feet and is 115 feet deep with a total lot size of 4,140 square feet. The zoning is R6A which allows for up to 3 times floor area ratio (FAR) for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $1.9 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property since September of 2020. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received 20 housing violations and $250 in OATH penalties in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $5 million on this tax lot.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of three of the nine commercial properties representing 60,790 square feet of the 79,652 square feet. The largest owner is Yaakov Klein, followed by Sugar Hill Capital Partners and then Aubrey Phillibert.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 50 percent of the 79,652 square feet of built space are elevator buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 30 percent of the space.

The seller

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Sugar Hill Capital Partners owned at least 98 commercial properties in New York City with 1,799,200 square feet and a city-determined market value of $224.9 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $150.9 million in debt, with top three lenders as Signature Bank, Citibank, and New York Community Bank respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 55 percent of the 1,799,200 square feet of built space are walkup properties, with elevator properties next occupying 34 percent of the space. The bulk, or 71 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Brooklyn next at 29 percent of the space.

Direct link to Acris document. link